A reactive flow control mechanism in ATM network with end-to-end transport

A source rate control mechanism called RCT (rate control for end-to-end transport), which reacts on instantaneous internal congestion, is developed. As the propagation delay is relatively long in ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks in comparison with transmission time, the feedback information on congestion can be late. To avoid low utilization of communication resources caused by the wrong information, the control scheme uses measured overload period, and it uses only two adjustable transmission rates. One is the allowed peak rate and the other a rate that is for enforcing the transmission rate when there is a congestion in the network. The RCT is a simple flow control mechanism. It does not require any further real time information except the measured overload period and shows acceptable performance when the average overload period is bounded